The Prague Municipal Development Company will start operating from June

Prague - A new municipal organization, Prague Development Company, will take care of the main city’s lands, their development, and the construction of residential buildings. The organization will be established on June 1 of this year, and Prague will contribute a non-investment subsidy of 13 million crowns to it. Prague councilors decided on this during a meeting that extended from Thursday, May 21 to early Friday morning. The organization will be led by a director appointed by the city council, and it will also include a three-member investment advisory committee that will advise the director.

The organization will be engaged in land development, preparing city lands and areas for the construction of residential buildings, up to the stage of zoning proceedings. Concurrently, the leadership of Prague will decide for specific projects whether the city will build the houses itself or cooperate with a private investor. The tasks that the city developer will address will always have to be approved by the leadership of Prague.

For apartment construction, the city hall has identified around 40 municipal plots. Among them are, for example, Palmovka in Prague 8 or Nové Dvory in Prague 4.

In addition to the city hall and city leadership, the city developer will collaborate with individual city districts, the transport company, the Technical Administration of Communications, and other managers of city infrastructure.

By the end of 2020, the organization is expected to have ten to 12 employees. Next year, this will increase to 12 to 16, and by the end of 2022, it should have 20 to 25 employees. The organization will be headed by a director, who will have at their disposal an investment advisory committee, the members of which will be appointed for three years by the director based on a proposal from the councilor for the area of urban development and land use plan. The city council will approve the nominations of committee members. The city will announce a selection process for the position of director.

Some opposition councilors criticized the plan. Councilor Ondřej Martan (ODS) said that the city hall's housing committee did not support the proposal. According to Martan, the city leadership would allow unelected individuals to manage city lands worth hundreds of millions of crowns. He believes the project is poorly prepared and vague. Opposition councilors Martin Sedeke (ODS) and David Vodrážka (ODS) stated that similar attempts in the past had failed. The chairman of the ANO councilors, Patrik Nacher, pointed out mistakes in the material and ambiguities. He also mentioned why a similar function is not performed by the municipal organization Institute of Planning and Development (IPR).

Deputy Mayor Petr Hlaváček (TOP 09), who submitted the material to the councilors, disagreed with the criticisms. "These are standard procedures of Western European cities,” he said. The establishment of the company was also supported by coalition councilor Pavel Zelenka (Prague for Us).

In recent years, the metropolis has been struggling with a housing crisis and rising housing prices. The city leadership wants to address this through expedited construction permits and other measures, including halting the privatization of municipal apartments and supporting cooperative housing construction.